Beth Winter

I finally got through Eliot Pattison's latest novel; I bought it three weeks ago, but with work and movies and HBP, I didn't have the time to sit quietly for five hours and read it in one take as it deserves to be read. It's as beautiful as Skull Mantra, Water Touching Stone and Bone Mountain. It's just - so quiet, so precise, so touching. Tragic and lovely and uplifting. "Chinese ex-cop camp survivor solves crimes in Tibet" doesn't even begin to describe it.

And if you never read any of the novels, no fear. A batwinged Tibetan bunny is gnawing at my fingers, waiting only until I persuade Xiao Shan that yes, he has to go up that snowy mountain, because the strange foreigners can help him find a killer. At least I don't have to worry about him commenting on the ninja gear, because he'll chalk it up to more Tibetan weirdness.

And that story will probably have the dubious honor of being the first Shan Tao Yun fanfic ever written. Um, at least he's not part of the slash pairing?

I think I'd better go and barricade the door against Tibetan vengeance gods :S

Egypt now :( Quite apart from the tragedy (and it's ironic that it gets less billing than London, despite the similar scale), I'm also thinking about more mundane things. Like the fact that last year, the female parental unit finally stopped making "but they blow people up!" noises whenever I mentioned going to see the pyramids. I'm sorely tempted to use my internship money and take advantage of the fact it's going to be cheaper this winter. Not letting the bastards grind us down, and all that.

Current events in general are making me want to write bleak stories that no-one will read.

Now, to movies. Between the V for Vendetta trailer, which looks hopeful, the fact they moved the Polish Mr & Mrs Smith premiere up to August 5th, and the fact that I'm going to the pre-screening of Batman Begins today (boo-yah!) they cheer me up a bit ^^

Oooh. I can combine the two and read V for Vendetta on the tube today. And then write V-fic, possibly set in a future where the bad nuclear things only happened to Britain, so that the rest of the world history could proceed without many alterations. Right.

From reynardine:

If you happen to be working on some creative writing project, fanfiction or what have you, post exactly one sentence from each of your current work(s) in progress in your journal. It should probably be your favourite or most intriguing sentence so far, but what you choose is entirely your discretion. Mention the title (and genre) if you like, but don't mention anything else -- this is merely to whet the general appetite for your forthcoming work(s).

Folk tales would have it that the soul took three days to leave, and then the dead could come back as a vampire, a shadow of its human self.
- Quintile (Five of Pentacles), Van Helsing set of drabbles

She was the one who woke when nightmares took them, the one who lit the candles and told them the Phantom could not possibly be there.
- Au Clair de Lune, Phantom of the Opera post-movie tragedy of manners

What kind of person sculpted the face of his unwilling love and dressed it for a wedding?
- unnamed (possibly Madness of Senses), Phantom of the Opera action comedy

So sad and wild, with strange pride and recklessness, someone singing in the cold and revelling in the tragedy.
- When I Leave It Will Be Darker, Phantom of the Opera/Van Helsing crossover vignette

By the way, When I Leave... and the first chapter of Madness of Senses are written out in longhand in my notebook. If I don't post them by tomorrow morning, feel free to kick me to type faster.

Current deadmentalking muses are byzantinequeen, jagiello and poet_rambo. I think it gives me a wide range of possibilities, between the reformed sinner made empress, the not-so-barbarian warlord and the snooty and perverted artiste <3
I won't be taking any more simply because there's no-one else who'd be both interesting to others and easy to play for me. Michael Hutchence tempted me for a moment, but he was something of a neurotic with destructive taste in women, so it'd just be an excuse to post pretty pictures of him ;)

Life continues to kick me. But I have other problems, too.

Opening line of current oeuvre:

"Paris was grey. The stones glistened in the rain like the bones of old gods, and chimney-smoke soiled the last survivors of the snowfields that had briefly bleached the city's face only weeks before. Water dripping from the edge of a roof to a balcony below rang out a funeral march."

I need to find a hammer and knock my new muse on the head ~_~ Erik, I know you're down and out and everything, but could you please try not to make me write like Anne bloody Rice?

EDIT

New version:

"Paris was grey. The stones glistened in the rain like frosted glass, and chimney-smoke soiled the last survivors of the snowfields that had briefly bleached the city only weeks before. Water dripping from the edge of a roof to a balcony below rang out a solo in three-eight time. Her companion was prone to translating everything into opera."

That's better. A bit.

First of all, in the immortal words of Garfield, FEED ME. There are people on my friendslist who read and write Van Helsing fiction of the Dracula/Gabriel genre. Please, some recs? I'm starving here!

In other news, I don't think I mentioned it here except in a custom-locked post. I'm doing Nano this year, too.

( Why, what, when )

( And an excerpt from Dragon Town )

*looks at friendslist* I keep feeling I forgot something. Oh, right. If you're a US citizen, go do me a favour and kick Bush out of the White House. Or there'll be no living with uberbitsch :P

I saw King Arthur. With M. Which is beyond lovely, because we just snarked over the whole movie.

Also? I'm writing KA fanfic. WITH M. You may now start running in fear. Deal is, he does plotty-plotty, period and military detail, I fill in the gaps and dialogue.

...I wonder if he'll allow me to draw the third side of the triangle :D

Consulting with my female friends in a last-minute brainstorm before the ball, I came to the conclusion that I am the only one who's coordinating her body lotion's scent with her perfume. To my defense, my perfume will be Samsara by Guerlain, the scent equivalent of a medieval siege engine.

(My new body lotion is buttermilk-scented, if you were wondering.)

The epistolary Seishirou/Subaru fic is going well - I wrote four letters today, two from each. As soon as I think of a title, I can post the first part.

Anybody got an idea for a title? Letters, canon X-timeline, romance/sap, saying in writing what they wouldn't say out loud...

( Excerpt from Seishirou's second letter )

And Subaru just ended his second letter with "Hugs&Kisses". He's being ironic, but still.

How exactly does one go about turning in one's goodfic-writer card?

[ETA] The woman from the writing implements shop called to say that they got my fountain pen back from Switzerland. She didn't say if it was fixed or not... *trembles* Want my pen back!

(Still incoherent. Sorry.)

I'm toying with the idea of a paid account. For vanity reasons only: I want a better layout and more user icons. The problem? That's $25 per year plus $10 for the icons. Fourteen coffees, eight to ten comic books, four paperbacks, twice my average monthly Avon order, one session at the beauty salon, 2/3 of having my hair done. Priorities, priorities.

In other news, my fictives take a perverse pleasure in giving me ideas while I'm trying to bathe. This time it's a strange modern Fingon. I'm not sure it'll go anywhere; I hope it will, because I find modern Quendi a fascinating concept, and I have a lot of little crystal shards of images that I'd like to fit into it.

Thranduil watching Maedhros play pachinko in a parlour in Osaka is one of them.

But so far, it's just Fingon rambling.

( what Fingon had to say so far )

In other news, teen!Seishirou in Tsubasa? Woo. I so need to get scanlations...

As I mentioned on the blog, it's time to face the music. Just about everyone on my blogroll has a livejournal now, and I haven't been keeping up with their non-lj musings anyway. So this will now be updated much more frequently as my fandom/whatever notebook, while whimsy and some Real Life stuff will stay in the blog.

Case in point: my big Silmarillion thingie. I've been wibbling about it for a month now. It will possibly be called "Battle Scars" or "No Journey Without Scars".

Just now, the not-quite-main character Taithrenwen (called Taith by everyone who knows Sindarin better than she does) poked me and decided she wants an introduction, and preferably before Celegorm finishes waxing lyrical about the weather in the prologue to the first story in the series, "All Along the Watchtowers". She didn't let me go until 500 words later.

( if you want a sneak peek... )</lj-cut

Teen!Boromir, kindly unhand Maglor. The poor thing's in no state for a relationship of any kind, nevermind the paedophilia angle.

Curufin, let Sands out of the closet. I don't care what he said about your Cunning Plan (TM).

Sands, stop waving that gun around. I mean it.

Subaru, don't glare at me like that. I solemnly swear I'll write you the Kamui-molestation fic as soon as I re-read X. Promise.

Fëanor, get out of my head. Wait, let me rephrase that. Beth, stop channeling Fëanor. Now.

Thank you.

In other news, LOTR-fic and "On the lips and hearts of children" (OUATIM, next installment of "Back in the fold" series) are both finished in first draft. Still some editing to do, but things are going well. Finally.